Conn's slowly reducing customer credit defaults

Televisions and electronics are displayed at a Conn's Home Plus in Spring. ﻿

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Staff

Conn's, the Woodlands-based home and consumer electronics retailer, reported its delinquency rates have dropped slightly since January, and it made fewer sales in February than it did a year ago.

Its 60-day delinquency rate was down half a percent to 9.2 percent since January, the company said Thursday. Conn's has been trying to chip away at the number of customers defaulting on credit.

It has 90 stores throughout the southern U.S., with 19 in the Houston area, and makes many of its sales on credit. In the third quarter of 2014, 94 percent of sales were made on credit.

Sales from stores open a year ago were down 5.8 percent, though the company made 4.9 percent more money than it did in February 2014, bringing in $95.4 million in net sales.

Conn's has repeatedly tightened its credit standards over the last two years and in December said it would further. At that point, despite a higher standard, more customers were defaulting.

But it has made progress from a 10 percent rate in November.

Bad weather in February hurt delivery of goods and number of store visitors, Conn's CEO Theodore Wright said in a statement. Furniture sales also were curtailed by labor disputes at West Coast ports that made less furniture available, he said.

Conn's stock rose 8.19 percent following the news Thursday, to close at $28.20.